btw, if anyone uploads something, please drop a note here, because uploads need to be approved, and you can quicken the process if you let us know that you've uploaded something.

And lastly, once uploaded and approved, if you click on the DOWNLOAD button on your Little Reader, you will see it listed there for everyone to see! Which is why the first item now is lawrencelb's Body Parts!

Thanks for that, lawrencelb!!

That's a great effort, and what a cute baby! 

See, it wasn't that difficult, was it?  We hope to see many more soon, from you and from others!

KL

No sound clips is absolutely OK!! I would encourage everyone to start adding stuff, sound clips or not.  Who knows, we may even help you add them!

KL

It's great to have an SLP onboard!!  We could surely learn a lot from you, and your ideas would be most welcome!  Please keep 'em coming!

KL

Welcome, Singaporeans!

AnuShyam, glad you are liking Little Reader!  We also believe real pictures would be better than cartoons.  The only reason why the action words are cartoons is cos if we were to use real videos, the file sizes would be very very big (even then, we tried to make sure the animations were not TOO cartoony).  But you know what, the best thing is, you can customize them, so if you prefer real videos, then take the videos yourself and use those instead!  Or for those who LIKE cartoons, then use cartoons!

Hope you all have fun here!

KL

Ah, that brings up the whole issue of phonics.

Whilst I'm not sure whether it'd be feasible to make it as sophisticated as how you describe, in Little Reader v2 (gosh, and we haven't even released v1 yet!  ), we will be including a brand new phonics section precisely for the reason of teaching a child how a word is spelt and pronounced.

For now, we have to do it more manually, eg., the "B Words" playlist.  There are other ways to get phonics concepts across too.  We'll try to upload some phonics-specific playlists to show you some asap!

But anyway, thanks for your thoughts, we'll bear that in mind when we do v2!

KL

The gifs such as walk etc.  Slower moving objects might be easier for babys to focus in on.

Thanks for the clarification, Catherine.  It would be difficult to incorporate a feature in LR to allow you to adjust the speed of the animation (particularly since the animation is not a GIF, actually, but a flash file.  We've tried to make the animation as realistic (in terms of motion) as possible, so that it's as clear as possible what the animation depicts.

I would like to be able to customize the playback of each set. For example, I like to randomize most of the sets, but sets of numbers I would like to be in order. The way it is now, if I change one feature of playback, it applies to all of them. follow me?

Let me introduce you to the world of Playlists...

Playlists will do exactly that, and the ability to save playback settings to each individual word set is one of the key reasons for the existence of the Playlist!  Please see this post for more details:
http://forum.brillkids.com/little-reader/upload-file/

Try creating Playlists and start enjoying its power!

KL

Thanks for pointing out that confusion.

Both have to do with the POINTER.  Yes, that's what that arrow is, and you can turn it on and off on the playback settings by checking/unchecking the box next to where it says "Pointer."

The purpose of this pointer is to allow you to point to each syllable of the word, or each word of the phrase, or simply to show your child that the word is read from left to right, so that instead of having your child simply memorize this word as a whole picture, he/she will start to understand how the language (or each word) is read (from left to right), and also that it is made of different syllables.

As for the requirement to double-click, this was a new feature added in v1.02 in response to this thread:
http://forum.brillkids.com/little-reader/the-pointer/
Basically, it's to give you time to position the pointer before the pronunciation starts.

We really need to explain the pointer better, and I thank you for pointing it out!

Please let us know if that clears things up!

Lawrencelb, your sentence seems to be cut short:

Maybe this is something that could be a feature in the future??  I think the purpose of this program could really be expanded by

Please relieve us of our suspense by telling us what you wanted to say there!


KL

So sorry about that. Some settings were changed to the server yesterday and it's causing heaps of problems, not just this one.  We're trying to get it fixed as we speak, so please bear with us!

KL

[1. Disappearing word issue]

OK, there are 2 issues there:

1. Disappearing word issue

It sounds like this problem:
http://forum.brillkids.com/little-reader/added-a-new-word-but-it's-not-there-when-you-play-back/
Please let us know if that solves the problem.

2. Multiple pics with multiple word displays

It seems like what you are saying is that you have included multiple pictures of, say, your own 'Mommy' picture, and you have set the playback so that the "Number of Displays" is set to more than 1.  So the playback goes: Mommy [word] / Mommy [picture] / Mommy [picture] / Mommy [picture].  And now you would like Mommy [word] to appear before each of the three Mommy pictures? Is that right?

If so, then yes, Little Reader can do that for you.  That's why Playlists exists! What you should do is to attach multiple Mommy's in your playlist, and set the playback setting to display 1 picture (instead of three).  So your playlist would look like:

Mommy
Mommy
Mommy
Annabelle
Annabelle
Annabelle

etc.

Both the above questions involve the understanding of the differences between Playlists and Categories, so if you haven't already read it, I would encourage you to read this:
http://forum.brillkids.com/little-reader/upload-file/

Hope that helps!


KL

Have you begun to customize your Word Library, and if so, how?

I suppose many of you must have at least customized Mommy and Daddy by now?

KL

It would be great for all of us to share our experiences in teaching our young one(s) to read. (We can also start separate threads about teaching them other things.)

I suppose I'll start!

We started Felicity (our first child) with Glenn Doman flash cards when she was around 4 months old.  We did it fairly regularly, on average maybe about twice a day, most days of the week, but each session was quite short, no more than 2-3 minutes each time.

In the meantime, we would be regularly reading to her, especially using Dr Seuss books. (Actually, we started reading Dr. Seuss when she was still in the womb!)  Sometimes we would point the words to her as we read, but most of the time we just read to her as bedtime reading.

Then when she was around 9 months old, we stumbled across the Your Baby Can Read during a Baby Fair/Exhibition.  I was in total awe when I first saw that video of Dr. Titzer's daughter Aleka! (actually, still am! ).  They actually sold out the books, but thankfully Dr. Titzer (who was there) saw how enthusiastic I was and procured a set for me.  I bought the complete set of videos and books, and started Felicity on the program immediately.

Until then, we could never tell whether Felicity got anything from the Glenn Doman flashcards, as they don't teach the child the meaning of the words, hence there's no way Felicity could have indicated to us whether she retained anything.  One great thing about the YBCR materials is that they incorporate the teaching of the meaning.  Felicity loved the videos and the books.  I think after a month or so, she demonstrated for the first time she was remembering the words when she clapped at the word 'clap.'

Wanting to give more personalization to the words and pictures shown to her, and to give her a wider range of words, I started to construct our own printouts.  As for pictures, since we didn't have a color printer, I would use my digital camera to take pictures of the objects I wanted from books, or even directly off the computer screen! And then I would take them to a photo shop and print them all out - cost me an arm and a leg, with the number of pictures I printed.  I ended up making more than 10 books, and Felicity devoured them! (though sometimes literally... ).  She just would not stop!!  After like 4 books in a row, I had to stop her in fear that it was getting a bit too much!

I then started also doing powerpoint slides for her, and later on, found someone to do a very simple computer program for me, which would become the genesis of Little Reader as you see it today.  I'm happy to say that Little Reader has gotten, um, slightly more powerful than that first version that was made 2 years ago.  Still, it served its purpose.

When she was 11 months old, she started to recognize many words already, and we finally caught it on video shortly after her first birthday.

Since then, she has continued to love to read.  Every night, she would insist that we read a book to her, though nowadays she would sometimes prefer to read some of it herself.

So that's our story.  What's yours?

KL

sorry to disagree with you, KL!

1 karma point to you for disagreeing!!

Actually, I'm not sure whether we really are disagreeing.  I do agree that children sometimes mix languages.  What I was saying was that **I** myself would try NOT to mix languages, to reduce the possibility of confusion.

Anyway, always good to have different opinions! Keep 'em coming!

KL

Thanks for the suggestions!

I think it would be nice if you could change the speed of the moving gifs. 

This one is easily do-able, except what is the best speed might be quite subjective.  Which of the animations did you think the speed should be adjusted, and how?

More foreign languages would be really nice. I've been having a hard time recording my own voice, as it doesn't come out as clear as it should.

Although we do aim to bring out more foreign language sets, there ARE quite a few languages in the world , so many people will be surely waiting for a long time, depending on which language they're after.  We're hoping that you users can help expand the library, especially the foreign language ones.  As for recording your own voice, a tip would be to make sure you don't speak directly into the microphone to avoid 'pops' like when you say "p" words.  aim the mic pointing up, and speak OVER the mic so that your breath goes above and over the mic.  If you have an audio editor, then use the 'Normalize' function to adjust the volume of the recording (usually it will make it louder).
Just a quick search for "free wav editor" showed up this program:
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/
I haven't used it myself but it looks like it's worth trying.

My toddler also loves to press on the mouse button and makes the frames go too fast too even enjoy them... it would be great if there was an option to turn off the mouse click and just have the frames change automatically every 5 seconds or so.   

That's a great idea! 1 Karma point to you!
In case you didn't know, you CAN auto-change the frames by checking the Auto-Forward checkbox in the Playback screen, and you control the speed with the "Speed" slider.  Unfortunately, right now, pressing the space bar or mouse would still advance the frames forward.
I think what we can do is to add a "Disable mouse + keyboard" checkbox next to the Auto-Forward checkbox.  The only key that would work would be the Esc button to stop play back. 

Would that work for you?

KL

I can't wait for little math and little musician!

Here's a sneak peek!
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b18/little-math-and-little-musician-a-sneak-peek!/